


All The Games We Play

by Themadwomanwhoisunfortunatelylackingabox



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Regeneration, The master is an emotional wreck but likes to hide it, Timelords are dicks, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 14:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5420945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Themadwomanwhoisunfortunatelylackingabox/pseuds/Themadwomanwhoisunfortunatelylackingabox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she regenerated, she always screamed for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Games We Play

When she regenerated, she screamed. Of course, back then, she had been he, and had been stuck in a place where hell would’ve been a better place to be. It was inevitable that he had screamed. She always did, when she regenerated. (He always did, when they hurt him that badly. When his entire body ached and burned and froze all at once.) She always screamed for _him_ to come save her.

It was probably a remnant from her first regeneration, when they had been together. When her screams would prompt him to come running, when he would hold her tight and promise to make it all better. (He always did promise to make it better.)

She always shook when it came, the unending newness and rawness of every cell in her body being rewritten and changed, the death and birth all at once. Regeneration differed from Timelord to Timelord, but she always had it on the rougher side. The more painful side. The doctor always went through his relatively easy---a couple of cases of regeneration sickness, from what she knew, but nothing more. He might say it was like dying, but he never felt it.

(She did, she always did. Every speck of her died, went out in blazing agony, then changed, burning themselves into becoming new.)

It probably didn’t help that her body had already been roughed up for ages before she became herself; that the Master’s body had been  toyed with at the whim of furious timelords, tortured and abused and battered. Every inch of him had ached for who knew how long. They wanted to draw out his eventual death. Wanted to make him suffer. He had been Gallifrey’s last hope, and he had ruined it.

 _Alright,_ she had thought, back when she had been he, and still had memories of the Doctor stuck in her head. _Let them_. She had spent her first six regenerations trying to escape from a black hole. This couldn’t be worse than that. She would use the time to find her escape.

(The Master had forgotten that because his people were his people, they were dreadfully good at tearing Timelords apart. Their intimate knowledge of their anatomy made it so much easier to try and break him. To tear what remained of his sanity---the sanity that they had already destroyed with those godforsaken drums---into shreds.)

It was a miracle that he still remembered his own name, at that time. _Master, Master, Master_ , He had repeated it, had dreamed of seeing the entire High Council on their knees pleading it, begging for mercy. (Oh, they would beg so prettily.)

They had dragged out his death so long, he hadn’t been sure how much time had gone by. But there had been a plan. He would complete it. He’d get out. Just once he had regenerated. Once the world stopped burning.

He always screamed when he regenerated. Always. But this time felt worse. (It always felt worse. No matter what. After all, it was always the first regeneration that body ever experienced. It was always the last. He knew what it felt like, but in  a way, she didn’t.) This time felt like every new inch radiated betrayal. This time felt like he had been burning from the inside out, turning liquid and molten and different, so different, so very different----

He had spasmed, had twitched and screamed on the cold ground of his cell, burning and changing and tearing himself apart so that he could make way for the new. Gold enveloped him. All he could see was gold, that damned color of time, of regeneration, of flames, and it had burned him. It had burned away every bit of soul that he had left. He wanted to cling to it, still, even in the middle of regeneration. He wanted to cling to life screaming.

He had screamed.

He hadn’t survived.

In that moment, there hadn’t been any idea of _her,_ not yet, and it felt far more like death than anything akin to life. She had thought every prayer in the universe, had begged every deity that she had never believed in.

The Master had died in a fit of fire and time energy, screaming for help and begging. (He would never call it begging, of course, but that’s what it was, crying for the Doctor with whimpered moans from broken, mutating vocal chords.)

The Mistress had risen from his ashes, new and old and still shaking from when she had changed. She was better now, regeneration clearing her mind and making her better, smarter, more quick witted. She was healthy now, in her prime. She could see ten ways to escape the cell they had put her in, and three ways that wouldn’t lead to her immediate recapture. Oh, she liked this new body, liked the pretty pitch of her new voice, liked the long brown hair.

(The Doctor always did like his pretty girls.)

It was a pity that she’d never get a mustache this time, though. She had liked those in her other bodies. But that wouldn’t fit, not like this. New and old, friend and foe, all at once. A hybrid. The Doctor would like that, wouldn’t he? He always did like impossible things. (That’s why he liked her so much, she supposed. A paradox for him to solve. A mystery for him to fix. Something for him to make better.)

What would be more impossible than her, back to life, outside the timelock? (She knew one thing that would be: them, together again, traveling the stars or ruling together side by side---oh, this body was a sentimental one, wasn’t it? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.)

He always did like those games they played. Life and death, chaos and order...What fun they’d have again.

 

She walked through London with freedom in the air and power in her step. Oh what fun she’d have, this time round. After all, wasn’t the Doctor’s birthday coming up? She had such a lovely idea for his gift.

  
  
  


(She always screamed when she regenerated. (She always came into life with his name on her lips.))

 

 

 


End file.
